Politics|Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin to Separate After His Latest Sexting Scandal

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Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin to Separate After His Latest Sexting Scandal

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After two earlier sexting scandals, Mr. Weiner did not vanish from public life. This time, his wife, Ms. Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s top aide, is separating from him.CreditCreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

It was supposed to be a quiet, late-summer weekend on the exclusive shores of the Hamptons. But on Sunday, Huma Abedin, the closest aide to Hillary Clinton, received devastating news.

After accompanying Mrs. Clinton to fund-raisers, Ms. Abedin learned from her husband, Anthony D. Weiner, that The New York Post was about to report that he had again exchanged lewd messages with a woman on social media: the sort of behavior that destroyed his congressional career and 2013 mayoral campaign.

Only this time, the online indiscretions included an image of Mr. Weiner’s crotch as he lay next to the couple’s 4-year-old son.

Now, Mr. Weiner’s tawdry activities may have claimed his marriage — Ms. Abedin told him that she wanted to separate — and have cast another shadow on the adviser and confidante who has been by Mrs. Clinton’s side for the past two decades. Ms. Abedin was already a major figure this summer in controversies over Mrs. Clinton’s handling of classified information as secretary of state and over ties between the Clinton family foundation and Mrs. Clinton’s State Department.

Mr. Weiner’s extramarital behavior also threatens to remind voters about the troubles in the Clintons’ own marriage over the decades, including Mrs. Clinton’s much-debated decision to remain with then-President Bill Clinton after revelations of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Ms. Abedin’s choice to separate from her husband evokes the debates that erupted over Mrs. Clinton’s handling of the Lewinsky affair, a scandal her campaign wants left in the past.

Clinton advisers expressed only sympathy for Ms. Abedin on Monday and said they were confident Mr. Weiner’s actions would not hurt Mrs. Clinton, who learned about them from Ms. Abedin and offered support. But Mr. Weiner’s behavior quickly became fodder for Donald J. Trump, Mrs. Clinton’s Republican opponent in the presidential race.

“Huma is making a very wise decision,” Mr. Trump said in a statement. “I know Anthony Weiner well, and she will be far better off without him.”

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Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin in Manhattan in 2013.CreditMichael Appleton for The New York Times

He then went further, claiming that the marriage’s breakdown was a matter of national security. Mrs. Clinton received her first intelligence briefing as the Democratic presidential nominee on Saturday at the F.B.I. field office in White Plains. No aides accompanied her to the briefing, according to a campaign official.

“I only worry for the country in that Hillary Clinton was careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have such close proximity to highly classified information,” Mr. Trump said, using language that echoed criticism of Mrs. Clinton this summer by the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey Jr. “Who knows what he learned and who he told? It’s just another example of Hillary Clinton’s bad judgment. It is possible that our country and its security have been greatly compromised by this.”

And political opponents, including Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, have questioned Ms. Abedin’s arrangement to earn income privately while she worked for Mrs. Clinton at the State Department. In addition to being on Mrs. Clinton’s personal payroll, Ms. Abedin received money from the Clinton Foundation and Teneo, a consulting firm founded in part by Douglas J. Band, previously a senior aide to Mr. Clinton.

Ms. Abedin, 40, has been at Mrs. Clinton’s side since she was an intern to the first lady in the 1990s. Now vice chairwoman of the Clinton campaign, Ms. Abedin, often described as a surrogate daughter, occupies an almost singular role as a trusted, and visible, confidante to Mrs. Clinton.

Their lives took similar tracks, as both women, citing their religious beliefs, seemed determined to remain married despite their husbands’ sexual proclivities.

Mrs. Clinton strongly supported Ms. Abedin when Mr. Weiner’s sexually charged text messages came to light in 2011, a year into their marriage, and again in 2013, when Mr. Weiner was running for mayor of New York. Friends of Mrs. Clinton said that she had spoken to Ms. Abedin at length about the marriage and that she supported Ms. Abedin’s decision to remain with Mr. Weiner and work on their relationship.

The couple’s marital problems have been a subject of years of tabloid mockery and humiliation since Mr. Weiner resigned from Congress in 2011 amid revelations that he had sent sexual images of himself to women on social media. His 2013 campaign for mayor was damaged, too, when Mr. Weiner admitted that he had continued flirting with women online.

By Monday morning, when the Post cover showing Mr. Weiner and his son, Jordan, hit newsstands, Mr. Weiner had left the Hamptons for New York City aware that Ms. Abedin planned to announce their separation, said two people close to the couple who discussed private conversations on the condition of anonymity.

“After long and painful consideration and work on my marriage, I have made the decision to separate from my husband,” Ms. Abedin said in a statement. “Anthony and I remain devoted to doing what is best for our son, who is the light of our life. During this difficult time, I ask for respect for our privacy.”

In the latest issue of Vogue, Ms. Abedin portrayed Mr. Weiner as a devoted father and their marriage as a true partnership. “Many working moms feel this way — there is a lot of guilt,” she said. “I don’t think I could do it if I didn’t have the full support system I have, if Anthony wasn’t willing to be, essentially, a full-time dad.”

But the two people close to the couple said Ms. Abedin and Mr. Weiner had been growing apart for some time, with Ms. Abedin often on the campaign trail with Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Weiner at home with Jordan. They said the Post article had not caused a sudden and unexpected rupture to a happy marriage, but rather was the final catalyst for Ms. Abedin to move for a separation.

Campaign officials had braced for new revelations about Mr. Weiner after The Post reported this month that a Republican had baited Mr. Weiner into a flirtatious online chat. Asked by The New York Times this month whether he was still engaging in the behavior that had foiled his political career, Mr. Weiner said, “I’m not going to go down the path of talking about any of that.”

Mrs. Clinton had hoped to ride out the final week of August with limited distractions as she seeks to maintain her solid lead in national polls. On Monday, she attended three fund-raisers in the Hamptons, without Ms. Abedin, and spoke briefly on a conference call with policy experts and medical providers to unveil her proposals on mental health.

“We’ve got to make clear mental health is not a personal failing,” Mrs. Clinton said.

Aides said that Ms. Abedin’s marriage was a private matter and that her decision to announce the separation meant the frenetic news cycle would soon move on.

“The best way to get rid of a problem is to get rid of a problem,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic consultant. “The end of that marriage publicly announced makes it impossible for Anthony Weiner to have anything to do with the campaign.”

But unlike many political aides, Ms. Abedin has become a public figure in her own right, posing for Vogue, snapping selfies with voters on the rope line at Mrs. Clinton’s campaign events and hosting her own fund-raisers on her boss’s behalf.

Hours after Ms. Abedin released her statement, Showtime blasted out a news release announcing the October television debut of “Weiner,” an unfettered documentary about the implosion of Mr. Weiner’s mayoral campaign and the couple’s interactions after his second scandal.

In the messages reported by The Post, Mr. Weiner exchanged photos with a woman. She appeared in various bikinis, and Mr. Weiner was half-dressed, showing off his stomach or his groin — and they talked about sex.

In one message, Mr. Weiner abruptly changed the discussion from massage parlors and reportedly wrote, “Someone just climbed into my bed.”

“Really?” the woman replied.

His response, in a screen shot dated July 31, 2015, showed a child curled up next to Mr. Weiner, who was wearing only white briefs.